Books The Imperial Elephant The Amoral Elephant by William K. Tabb

The new imperialism "THE NEW IMPERIALISM", Hobson observed in 1902, "differs from the older, first, in substituting for the ambition of a single growing empire the theory and the practice of competing empires, each motivated by similar lusts of political aggrandizement and commercial gain; secondly, in the dominance of financial or investing over mercantile interests." Lenin, who had read Hobson's "Imperialism," described imperialism as the new stage of capitalism, a striving towards violence and reaction. Today, the imperial centre, in the guise of "globalisation," has moved to the USA. The enthusiastic American  jingos clamour for Washington to serve as "Globocop". "A colossus unconstrained by any values, loyalties or ideals of international law," says Chalmers Johnson, former CIA man; "ruling by brute force" says George Mombiot of the "Guardian" newspaper. Samir Amin, the Egyptian writer, claims that "the ambition of the US is to bring the entire planet under its military control. The abolition of the common rights of all peoples, already underway, has substituted the distinction between a "Master Race" (Herrenvolk ). ... The existence of those peoples that do not belong to the US Master Race can only be tolerated if they do not constitute a "threat" to the ambitions of those calling themselves the "masters of the planet". We, therefore, have all become "Red Skins", the contemptuous name reserved for the Native Americans, in the eyes of the Washington establishment... " The lot of the Asians has not improved since 1955 when, at Bandung, C P Romulo noted that "We have experienced, and some among us experience still, the stigma of being belittled in one's own country, of being systematically reduced to an inferior condition , not only politically, economically and militarily, but racially as well ... In order to fortify his power, in order to justify himself in his own eyes, the Western white man considered as an established fact that his superiority resided in his genes themselves, in the colour of his skin." Asia knows well the fury of the master race. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were burnt to death in Hiroshima and Nagazaki; the Indo-China soil was poisoned with agent orange and children napalmed; and there is the unforgettable and cowardly "turkey shoot" of retreating soldiers in the Gulf war. Today the US gang of Bush, Rumsfield, Cheyney, Negroponte, Wolfowitz and Perle have refined the art of war as defined by the infamous Kissinger. Political assassination and the preemptive strike are things openly and shamelessly  advocated and the world lives in fear. And we have to remind ourselves that there are still many Barry Goldwaters out there who will have no compunction about incinerating countries such as Vietnam and China with nuclear weapons.

Fig leaf The new empire has turned the United Nations into a fig leaf for imperial adventures. We all remember that UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali was sacked when Madeline Albright opposed his view that Ruwandan genocide called for intervention which contradicted the US desire instead for the UN to be in the Balkans. And more  recently President Bush has warned the UN security council that accepting a new resolution authorising a war with Iraq was its "last chance" to prove "its relevance". And to make it "relevant", arm twisting is used to get the required votes in the UN for war against Iraq.     On the economic front, what William K. Tabb calls "the amoral elephant", "forces the nations of the world to transform their economies to accommodate its demands",.. ." a beast seemingly free to roam across the globe, stomping down wages, environmental protections, and any institutions and values that are not market-driven, most particularly democracy itself." Global capitalism is now "so large a presence in our lives that we are like the blind men (with their elephant) who each grasp some seeming local truth ... And of course those who ride atop the elephant have a different experience of its nature than those who are trod beneath its feat. The elephant itself is amoral." The new imperialism demands "structural adjustment," which Martin Khor (quoted by Tabb) describes as "a policy to continue colonial trade and economic patterns developed during the colonial period, but which the Northern powers want to continue into the post-colonial period. Economically speaking, we are more dependent on the ex-colonial countries than we ever were. The World Bank and the IMF are playing the role that our ex-colonial masters used to play." It has been said that US pressures for financial opening are as effective as the gunboats of an earlier age. What we have now is not the physical conquest of countries but "a form of indirect rule through global state governance institutions, the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF which set the rules and guide the local governments". "... A country is put under the control of international institutions which in effect means being controlled by the rich countries. It means colonisation and nothing else. As before when gunships were used to open up countries for trade, now the international institutions are used to open up countries for "free trade."( Dr Mahathir Mohamed). Almost all rich counties used tariff protection and subsidies to develop their industries. These were used most aggressively by US and GB as pointed out by Ja-Joon Chang of the faculty of economics at Cambridge University. He points out that the rich countries are "kicking away the ladder " that allowed them to climb to where they are today. "It is no coincidence that economic development has become more difficult during the last two decades, precisely when the developing countries increased the pressure on the developing countries to adopt neoliberal policies and institutions. During this period the average annual per capita income growth rate for the developing countries has been half of the three per cent achieved in the previous two decades (1960 - 1980)" While developing countries try to copy the developed countries by similar protective measures they are punished for violating WTO rules. They are forced to open markets to foreign grains and other basic foods and local farmers driven off the land. The rich countries continue to protect industries which compete with third world exports. Tariffs on manufacturing imports from poor countries are four times higher than imports from other rich countries. US punishes countries found dumping goods into the US market but insists it should be able to keep tariffs in place, e.g. in the garment industry. Already, Mexican farmers protest that NAFTA is destroying livelihoods. And we read of attacks on Vietnam for allegedly dumping catfish on the US market. The US calls for free trade but the Farm Bill undercuts its foreign aid by flooding markets with cotton and sugar, ruining African farmers.

Less than US2 a day While one third of world lives on less than US$2 a day, the US and EU continue to subsidise their agriculture. Result: cows have a better life than people in poor countries. The West offers US$30 billion in foreign aid but their agricultural subsidies are US$300 billion. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Nestle's chief executive officer points that in the US farm subsidies amount to US9,240 per cow and in Europe US$6,190 According to the UN Human Development Report 2002 the Income of the richest 10% of the US population now equals that of the poorest 43% of the world population. Inequality is increasing between North and the South. Fifty-two countries showed negative growth over the 1990s. Between 1975 and 2000 per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa (in purchasing power parity terms) dropped from one-sixth to only one-fourteenth that of rich countries in the OECD. Regulation of the world's economy by the WTO, IMF, and World Bank have driven entire nations into insurmountable debt: the increasing mobility of money drives up inflation and forces countries into a web of dependency, where their only option is to obtain loans from multinational banks.

Whimpering and begging The developing countries' efforts to bring sense to WTO have failed. The WTO's trade round collapsed in Seattle in 1999 because it offered the poor nations nothing, while granting new rights to the rich world's corporations. It was relaunched in Qatar in 2001 only because those nations were promised that they could override the patents on expensive drugs and import cheaper copies when public health was threatened, and they could expect a major reduction in the rich world's agricultural subsidies. At the WTO meeting in February at Geneva, the US broke both promises. So dumping continues. The US attitude to environmental concerns is appalling. Its refusal to ratify Kyoto Protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity shows that it has turned its back on  the world environmental crisis. The promises made at Rio 1992 have become worthless. The IFG report for the United Nations' World Summit on Sustainable Development entitled "Intrinsic Consequences of Economic Globalization on the Environment" says, "The central message of this report is that environmental and social sustainability cannot be achieved while governments, bureaucracies and global economic forces simultaneously pursue a global corporate development model: economic globalization. Sustainability and corporate globalization are in direct contradiction." Highly "globalised " Malaysia has tasted the bitter fruit of globalisation. As Dr Mahathir said, " [It] has driven the forces that resulted in the demise of the East Asian miracle. The great Asian Tigers are no more. Reduced to whimpering and begging..." Dr. Mahathir's refusal to whimper comes in for favourable mention in this book. ".. While the mainstream economists thought such a step [ending convertibility] would be a disaster, a year later, when the crisis had passed , it turned out that no harm was done to the Malaysian economy. There was an emerging sense that controls against speculative and destabilising short- term hot money flows might not be a bad idea" Someone has yet to come forward with a magic programme for freeing this country from the trap it has got itself into.# K L Chai ________ The Amoral Elephant: Globalization and the Struggle for Social Justice in the 21st Century WILLIAM K. TABB is professor of economics and political science at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of Restructuring Political Economy (Routledge, 1999) and The Amoral Elephant (Monthly Review Press, 2001).

A worthy cause Little Sisters of the Poor at Bati Lanchang, Penang

______ INDEX Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK Index page    Baba Sayings     Book Review    Changing Penang     Chopsticks     Fiona Kam Meadley    Malay Manuscripts     Opium King     Our Hawkers

_____________________ The Penang File Issue  27